Hale, good luck with your bowl repair - that looks like an interesting technique.
I would be surprized if 2000 degree paint stayed on your branding iron. I sprayed some high temp ceramic paint on a metal firepit and it was toast! _________________May we all get to have a chance to ride the fast one
Walk away wiser when we crashed one
Keep hoping that the best one is the last one

Did you bake the paint?
High temp paints often need tempered at lower temperatures in order to bake them into the material, much like a powdercoat.
I've used them a lot on engine parts over the years, and have learned a few tricks along the way. Like annealing steel in order to bleed it of the moisture from it before applying a coating. Most people don't realize that even raw steel still has moisture in it. I'm most worries about it adhering where the brand contacts the material. Never ran into that situation before.

And thanks, I sure hope it goes well too. I don't have solid gold at my disposal, like a lot of the kintsugi masters had 100+ years ago, but the powder will do just fine for a decorative piece. I think the gold will look nice alongside the deep brown as well.

I received the Mai Tai glasses, and they do not have a big thick bottom. I'm tracking down a new source for high quality, Made in the USA, at a decent price.

A trip to the Grass Skirt Tiki Room lit another fire under me to get more tiki projects done.

So I came home and made some bright UV reactive chunks!

They're so bright that the camera in the phone couldn't stop down far enough to photograph them in regular overhead light. I liked the colors, and I found a form that I'm going to use, so I decided that my first light is going to be called Hot Lava, and will be a mix of approximately 12 different subtlety different tones of orange and red, including some blacklight reactive pieces. Call the Grass Skirt a bit of inspiration, and that I just got in a bunch of new pigments. So, here is a pile of some of the chunks that are going to go into this lamp.

And a moai or two. I've got something very special planned for the fill between the chunks. I'm waiting for it to arrive, and if it works out (which I hope it does), it's going to look wonderful!

Now I'm deciding between color for the cord. It's going to be a cloth cord, newly manufactured for safety, and not grounded. Light bulbs don't need to be grounded, and as someone who has an older home with the occasional two prong outlet, I understand that some of you out there may also have some two prong outlets. My options are black and brown.
Any thoughts?

Sorry about the photos, I really need to start documenting things with something other than my phone.

"UV reactive chunks" that sounds intriguing. Will you put a UV light source somewhere, either inside or outside of the lamp?
_________________May we all get to have a chance to ride the fast one
Walk away wiser when we crashed one
Keep hoping that the best one is the last one

I'm looking into alternative lighting sources. I work with LED, neon, cold cathode, et cetera all the time, and am thinking of moving in that direction. Especially with all of the lighting I've done with RGB led's that allow you to change the light color. I was going to mention that later on, but since you asked, I'm more than happy to answer!

I'd rather stray away from conventional lighting. As much as I love the warm glow of an old incandescent bulb with a nice filament, there's a lot of bulb banning going on in different parts of the world, even here in the US. And although LED's certainly aren't the way of the future, they're the way of tomorrow. My current thought on the light source is to do 1 of two things.
1. RGB LED's. They're remote controlled, they're super bright, they can be dimmed, and they'll even do a purple/blue, which should react VERY well with the pigments in the chunks. I haven't done a test yet, as I spent my spare time today casting them. LED Blacklight isn't the same as traditional black light tubes. It gets pretty close, but has a lot more visible light output. For this application, however, I think it'll work just fine. I can also wire it to be plug in or hardwired, despite needing DC current.
2. Cold cathode/neon. I think I'm going to reserve this for single purpose lights. There's a purple "lava" tube that I get that kind of similar to a plasma ball, but not. It's hard to describe, and it doesn't output a lot of light, but mannnnnn does it look cool.

On 2013-01-23 16:42, Hale Tiki wrote:I'm looking into alternative lighting sources. I work with LED, neon, cold cathode, et cetera all the time, and am thinking of moving in that direction. Especially with all of the lighting I've done with RGB led's that allow you to change the light color. I was going to mention that later on, but since you asked, I'm more than happy to answer!

I'd rather stray away from conventional lighting. As much as I love the warm glow of an old incandescent bulb with a nice filament, there's a lot of bulb banning going on in different parts of the world, even here in the US. And although LED's certainly aren't the way of the future, they're the way of tomorrow. My current thought on the light source is to do 1 of two things.
1. RGB LED's. They're remote controlled, they're super bright, they can be dimmed, and they'll even do a purple/blue, which should react VERY well with the pigments in the chunks. I haven't done a test yet, as I spent my spare time today casting them. LED Blacklight isn't the same as traditional black light tubes. It gets pretty close, but has a lot more visible light output. For this application, however, I think it'll work just fine. I can also wire it to be plug in or hardwired, despite needing DC current.
2. Cold cathode/neon. I think I'm going to reserve this for single purpose lights. There's a purple "lava" tube that I get that kind of similar to a plasma ball, but not. It's hard to describe, and it doesn't output a lot of light, but mannnnnn does it look cool.

I'll have to try to get some photo/video.

Have you tried electroluminescent wire for any projects? Positives/negatives? I've been planning a volcano picture, but it doesn't seem that flowing EL wire comes in the volcano colors of red, yellow, white and orange.
_________________-Lori

tikilongbeach: We use it all the time here. Rarely do we using the flowing EL wire, but we use EL a lot. As far as the lack of red, orange, and yellow, I've seen then from Chinese distributors, so alibaba might be the best chance for you. Conversely, you can find white EL chase wire, and coat it with a tinted transparent paint. You can buy them from a hobby store. That, or depending on the project, have the white behind acrylic.

The companies above seems to have red, so that's a start. You could make orange from red... There might be alternatives to the EL, controllers, et cetera. Shoot me a message with what the project is, and perhaps I can help.

(Side note, EL is terrible for light output. It looks great, but as far as the amount of lumens, even the best (which we've used here, everything from the wire, to the tape, to EL "neon") is very low in light output.